The 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is the only convention in the history of the United Nations to use the word ‘evil’. In the intervening 60 years, drug production has increased exponentially across the globe. The tectonic plates underneath our attitudes to drugs – in their production and consumption, and their effects on individuals and societies – are moving. Does the international order still have the firepower to keep fighting this War on Drugs, or is it time for change? Could we cope?
Ed Vulliamy, Peter Hitchens and Pete Maguire will be be discussing if legalisation could be – or should be – the answer. Don’t miss it.
Ed Vulliamy is a journalist and author who has worked more than 30 years as a staff international reporter with the Guardian and Observer newspapers of London. He won all major awards in British journalism for his coverage of the Balkan wars between 1991-5, and discovered the gulag of concentration camps operated by the Bosnian Serbs in the Northwest Krajina region of Bosnia. As a result, he became the first reporter to testify at a war crimes tribunal since those at Nuremberg, giving evidence in nine trials at the ICTY in The Hague. He currently specialises in narco-traffic, winning the 2013 Ryszard Kapuski Prize for Literary Reportage for his “Amexica: War Along The Borderline” and was shortlisted for the same prize in 2016 for “The War Is Dead Long Live the War, Bosnia: The Reckoning”. Vulliamy is currently producing a film on the Colombian peace process and writing a book on banks that launder the profits of drug trafficking. His most recent publication is a memoir through music, “When Words Fail: A Life With Music, War and Peace”.
Peter Maguire is the author of Law and War and Facing Death in Cambodia. He is a historian and former war-crimes investigator whose writings have been published in the International Herald Tribune, New York Times, The Independent, Newsday, New York Review of Books and Boston Globe. He has taught law and war theory at Columbia University and Bard College. His book, Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers and The Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade follows one of the most complex smuggling channels in the history of the drugtrade.
Peter Hitchens is a columnist for the Mail on Sunday, an occasional broadcaster and the author of several books, including ‘The War We Never Fought’ (2012) an examination of the British establishment’s drawn-out surrender to drugs from 1967 to now. He has been a Fleet Street journalist since 1977, specialising in education, labour affairs, politics, defence and diplomacy before working as a resident correspondent in Moscow (1990-92) and Washington DC (1993-95). He has visited 57 countries, some of which no longer exist, in the course of his work.
]]>The Panama Papers might be stirring trouble for world leaders, but revelations of illicit international money flows come as little surprise to Gavin Serkin. His book Frontier, acclaimed as a “must read” by the Financial Times, chronicles corruption and violence stretching from Africa to Asia and Latin America. This “gripping, powerful tale of the future flow of wealth,” as South Africa’s Business Day wrote in its review, is the topic for a high-flame grilling of the author by David Selves. Serkin recounts his police detention in one of the three most dangerous countries for journalists, and witnessing a beheading – while taking inspiration from breakthroughs that will make some of these places among the most important economies of tomorrow.
Gavin Serkin is a writer and journalist who previously headed Bloomberg’s Emerging Markets international desk. This year he created a news service dedicated to balancing prejudice from the financial industry against the developing world, along with a new radio show and hub to deliver powerful research to the international media. Serkin is the recipient of the Society of American Business Editors & Writers’ Best in Business Award and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Deadline Club Award.
David Selves is deputy chairman of the London Press Club and an accomplished after-dinner speaker, charity auctioneer and thriller writer. He instigated the London Press Club’s Quarterly Grill, where he grills high profile guests with questions submitted to him by the audience
This event is the latest in a series of debates, talks and Q&As from the London Press Club, with previous speakers including William Dalrymple, Alan Rusbridger, Sarah Sands and India Knight. For more information visit londonpressclub.co.uk.
London Press Club members can reserve a free space by emailing info@londonpressclub.co.uk and can buy any additional tickets here.
All attendees are welcome to join the London Press Club for drinks in the clubroom before and after the talk, with first drinks (from 6.30pm) courtesy of Gorkana. The evenings are an opportunity for young and old, experienced and students, from all aspects of media to mingle with each other – and those from the world of PR and business.
]]>By Allan Williams
Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega has until Monday to appeal against his extradition to Panama. The 77-year-old is currently serving a prison sentence in France after being convicted of money laundering in July 2010.
On Tuesday attention turns to Japan when the Parliament elects its sixth Prime Minister in five years. Incumbent Naoto Kan announced he was stepping down over plummeting approval ratings, following the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.
Wednesday sees Canada release its second quarter GDP figures. Fears of the economy contracting grew following an announcement earlier this month that manufacturing sales declined 1.5per cent in June, to their lowest level since November 2010.
Also on Wednesday South African President Jacob Zuma makes a state visit to Norway at the invitation of King Harald V. The two-day trip includes a wreath-laying ceremony at the National Monument and a meeting with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
In the UK, on Thursday, repatriations of deceased British troops move from RAF Lyneham to RAF Brize Norton. RAF Lyneham and the parade through the nearby town of Wootton Bassett have made the headlines with the dignified way locals have mourned the fallen.
In Thailand that same day, Chiranuch Premchaiporn, editor of the liberal news website Prachatai, has her trial for lese majeste offences recommence. It is alleged that Premchaiporn failed to screen comments on her website that were critical of the Thai royal family, and if convicted faces up to 20 years in prison.
Attention turns stateside on Friday, when a US district court decides whether to order a retrial of former baseball star Roger Clemens, who was accused of lying to Congress in 2008 when he denied using anabolic steroids. The original trial was declared a mistrial on 14 July.
In London on Saturday the far-right English Defence League are expected to demonstrate in the borough of Tower Hamlets, against what it sees as militant Islam. The march is expected to be banned by the Home Secretary, but the action group Unite Against Fascism has arranged a counter-protest against the EDL.
On Sunday the UN Special Representative on Somalia Augustine Mahiga convenes a conference in the east African nation to provide clear timelines and benchmarks for the Transitional Federal Institutions.
And in Germany there’s a test for Chancellor Merkel’s coalition when state elections take place in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with local elections coming under increasing scrutiny as a gauge of popularity for Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.
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